What is a "talking book" literature in the Song Dynasty?

The literature of the talking book is a form of literature formed in the Song Dynasty. "Talking book" is the base book used in the performance of talking artists, "talk" is the meaning of the story. "Talking" is the name of a kind of performing arts since the Tang and Song dynasties, that is, storytelling or storytelling. The person who performs "talking" is called a "talker". As the professional name of a performing art, "speaking" was first mentioned in the Tang Dynasty, but the art of rapping in China existed long before the Tang Dynasty. With the continuous development of the art of "talking", it gradually became a new literary style in the Song Dynasty. The "talking" of Song Dynasty was inherited from the "talking" of Tang Dynasty. And because of the development of urban economy, the establishment of tile house hook bar, the increase in the number of talking artists, the audience of the marketplace, the folk talk presents the characteristics of professionalism and commercialization. They specialize, the division of labor is very fine, belonging to the "talking" range of the play is divided into four: one for the novel; two for the history; three for the scriptures; the four for the Hopscotch. Among them, the novel and history are the two most important. Novels were based on stories of smoke and powder, spirits and monsters, legends, and public cases; histories were about the rise and fall of previous generations and wars. There are two kinds of situation in the production of the storybook: one is oral circulation. Many folk tales, historical legends and social news, etc., after the collection, organization and processing of talking artists; the second is the book will be compiled. Along with the emergence of the Washa and professional artists, Mr. Shuhui came into being, and in the Southern Song Dynasty, the guild established to protect the interests of Mr. Shuhui - "Shuhui" appeared. The Shukai were specialized in writing books and scripts for speakers and opera performers. With the development of the book market and the printing press, the books were changed from written to published and widely circulated, and for the first time in the history of Chinese literature, there was a popular vernacular novel that could be read. Generally speaking, the Song and Yuan talking books can be divided into three categories; one is the narrative rough text rough talking artist's base, such as "Three Kingdoms Zhi Pingtan", etc.; the second is the talking artist oral storytelling as the main content of the record collation of the book, the text is fluent, the description is meticulous, the narrative is detailed, may come from the readers at the time or Mr. Shu will be the hand of the reader, such as "the wrong beheading of Cuioning," "grinding jade Guanyin", etc.; the third is the literati based on the history books, wild history, notes, literary novels, etc. adapted from the book. Third, the literati based on history books, wild history, notes, literary novels and other adaptations of popular stories, such as the Xuanhe Remains. According to the records of "Drunken Weng Chat Records", "Bibliography of the Garden" and "Bao Wen Tang Bibliography", there are about 140 titles of novels and novels, but since the novels and novels were first circulated in the form of single books, they are mostly scattered. Those who have been preserved to date may have been processed and embellished by the Yuan and Ming people. From the former records and the content of the novel, the form of expression and other aspects of the investigation, basically can be judged to be the Song Dynasty left the words of the novel about more than 40 kinds. Novels and novels of a wide range of materials, rich in content, breaking through the six dynasties of novels and Tang Dynasty legend to the upper class or the life of the scholar as the object of depiction of the fence, reflecting a wide range of the Song and Yuan period of real life in the intricate contradictions and the world of human feelings, and fully embodies the public's interest in life and aesthetic consciousness. The themes and contents of the existing novels can be roughly divided into three categories: one is love; the second is public cases; and the third is fairies and ghosts. Among them, the works depicting love and marriage and lawsuits are the most numerous, the most accomplished and the most influential. The love stories in Song and Yuan novels and books reveal the anti-feudal social theme through various encounters with women in love and marriage, showing their resistance and struggle for freedom of marriage and the pursuit of a happy life, and the works tend to emphasize the active pursuit of women's love life. The works often highlight women's active pursuit of love. For example, "Grinding the Jade Goddess of Mercy" and "The Amorous Zhou Shengxian of the House of Fans" are excellent works on this kind of theme. Another prominent content of the novels is the public case stories. These stories, which are based on lawsuits and prisons, directly reflect the complex social contradictions at that time and expose and criticize the corrupt feudal officials. The Wrong Beheading of Cui Ning" and "Song Si Gong's Great Trouble with the Forbidden Soul Zhang" are representative works of this kind of theme. In addition, the contract of words, the three appearances of Longtu break the case, the brief post monk, and so on, also from different sides to reflect the civil disputes and social conflicts, people can also see from the world of public sentiment and social discipline. Song and Yuan novels are also very distinctive in art. First of all, the pursuit of plot twists and strong storytelling, which is a significant feature of the novels and books. Novels also focus on the integrity of the storyline structure, pay attention to the beginning, pay attention to the end, rigorous and complete, in order to adapt to the psychological requirements of the public and appreciate the interest. Second, the use of vivid vernacular spoken narrative. Once again, the novel also pays great attention to the characterization of the characters, and is good at the inner activities of the characters as well as the characters of words and deeds, etc., through the meticulous portrayal of the characters to show the characters, shaping a lot of vivid and distinctive characters with personality. In short, the Song and Yuan novels and books described in detail, vivid and realistic, between the lines retained the style of storytellers, showing the narrative of the spoken word, personalized voice and talk of the marketplace and other characteristics. 3. History Talking Book The Song and Yuan history talking book, also known as "plain speaking". Existing Song and Yuan publication or the Yuan new compilation of history books, most of the marked "plain language", such as "three kingdoms plain language", "the king of wu wang zhou zhou zhou" and so on. The meaning of "Plain Words" refers to the usual spoken language without playing or singing; the works may be interspersed with poems, but also for recitation, not for singing. In addition, it is called "flat", which emphasizes that although the storytelling of history is born out of the book of history, the language style is free from the difficult language and tends to be easy. Among the extant Song and Yuan history books, the Song compilers include Liang Gong Jiu Jian (Nine Admonitions of Liang Gong), Wu Dai Shi Ping Shu (Five Dynasties History), and Xuan He Yi Shi (Remains of Xuan He). The Nine Remonstrances of Mr. Liang is an early work of history-telling books. These history books, in fact, is a combination of traditional historical literature and folk oral storytelling products, in the institutional structure of the broadly have three characteristics: First, the length of the longer, sub-volume, because the history of the content is rich, complex, there must be a larger length to finish. The longest, such as the "Five Dynasties History" has more than 100,000 words, generally have four or five million words or so. Because of the long length, in order to speak and read convenient, most of the sub-volume subheading, usually marked out the content of the storyline, later became the chapter book back to the goblet. Secondly, each of the history of the book, the beginning of one or two seven poems or seven poems, known as the "opening poem", or summarize all the history, or explain the content of the history of the book, or to comment on the beginning. At the end of the book, there is a poem of seven stanzas or seven rhythms called the "Scattering Poem" to summarize the content of the book. Thirdly, the narrative method of chronology is adopted, in which the year and month of the occurrence of the story are marked out, and the storyline is told in the order of time development. In addition, before the storytelling skills and after the "opening poem", a history of the previous generation is often told first, so as to connect with the skills of the history-telling book. In addition, the history of the book to tell the main narrative, the language is mostly half-text and half-white, often interspersed with poems, books and passages, tables, letters and invitations between the narrative, in order to arouse the interest of the readers or listeners to increase their knowledge of history and literary knowledge.